The Young Lady's Mentor / A Guide to the Formation of Character. In a Series of Letters to Her Unknown Friends

by Anonymous

I have spoken of two necessary preparations for the practice of economy,—the first, a clear general view of our probable expenses; the second, which I am now about to notice, is the calculation of the probable funds that are to meet these expenses. In your case, there is a certain income, with sundry contingencies, very much varying, and altogether uncertain. Such probabilities, then, as the latter, ought to be appropriated to such expenses as are occasional and not inevitable: you must never calculate on them for any of your necessary expenditure, except in the same average manner as you have calculated that expenditure; and you must estimate the average considerably within probabilities, or you will be often thrown into discomfort. It is much better that all indulgences of mere taste, of entirely personal gratification, should be dependent on this uncertain fund; and here again I would warn you to keep in view the more pressing wants that may arise in the future. The gratification in which you are now indulging yourself may be a perfectly innocent one; but are you quite sure that you are not expending more money than you can prudently, or, to speak better, conscientiously afford, on that which offers only a temporary gratification, and involves no improvement or permanent benefit? You certainly are not sufficiently rich to indulge in any merely temporary gratification, except in extreme moderation. With relation to that part of your income which is varying and uncertain, I have observed that it is a very common temptation assailing the generous and thoughtless, (about money matters, often those who are least thoughtless about other things,) that there is always some future prospect of an increase of income, which is to free them from present embarrassments, and enable them to pay for the enjoyment of all those wishes that they are now gratifying. It is a future, however, that never arrives; for every increase of property brings new claims or new wants along with it; and it is found, too late, that, by exceeding present income, we have destroyed both the present and the future, we have created wants which the future income will find a difficulty in supplying, having in addition its own new ones to provide for.

It may indeed in a few, a very few, cases be necessary, in others expedient, to forestall that money which we have every certainty of presently possessing; but unless the expenditure relates to particulars coming under the term of "daily bread," it appears to me decided dishonesty to lay out an uncertain future income. Even if it should become ours, have we not acted in direct contradiction to the revealed will of God concerning us? The station of life in which God has placed us depends very much on the expenditure within our power; and if we double that, do we not in fact choose wilfully for ourselves a different position from that which he has appointed, and withdraw from under the guiding hand of his providence? Let us not hope that even temporal success will be allowed to result from such acts of disobedience.

What a high value does it stamp on the virtue of economy, when we thus consider it as one of the means towards enabling us to submit ourselves to the will of God!

I cannot close a letter to a woman on the subject of economy without referring to the subject of dress. Though your strongest temptations to extravagance may be those of a generous, warm heart, I have no doubt that you are also, though in an inferior degree, tempted by the desire to improve your personal appearance by the powerful aid of dress. It ought not to be otherwise; you should not be indifferent to a very important means of pleasing. Your natural beauty would be unavailing unless you devoted both time and care to its preservation and adornment. You should be solicitous to win the affection of those around you; and there are many who will be seriously influenced by any neglect of due attention to your personal appearance. Besides the insensible effect produced on the most ignorant and unreasonable spectator, those whom you will most wish to please will look upon it, and with justice, as an index to your mind; and a simple, graceful, and well-ordered exterior will always give the impression that similar qualities exist within. Dressing well is some a natural and easy accomplishment; to others, who may have the very same qualities existing in their minds without the power (which is in a degree mechanical) of displaying the same outward manifestation of them, it will be much more difficult to attain the same object with the same expense. Your study, therefore, of the art of dress must be a double one,—must first enable you to bring the smallest details of your apparel into as close conformity as possible to the forms and tastes of your mind, and, secondly, enable you to reconcile this exercise of taste with the duties of economy. If fashion is to be consulted as well as taste, I fear that you will find this impossible; if a gown or a bonnet is to be replaced by a new one, the moment a slight alteration takes place in the fashion of the shape or the colour, you will often be obliged to sacrifice taste as well as duty. Rather make up your mind to appear no richer than you are; if you cannot afford to vary your dress according to the rapidly—varying fashions, have the moral courage to confess this in action. Nor will your appearance lose much by the sacrifice. If your dress is in accordance with true taste, the more valuable of your acquaintance will be able to appreciate that, while they would be unconscious of any strict and expensive conformity to the fashions of the month. Of course, I do not speak now of any glaring discrepancy between your dress and the general costume of the time. There could be no display of a simple taste while any singularity in your dress attracted notice; neither could there be much additional expense in a moderate attention to the prevailing forms and colours of the time,—for bonnets and gowns do not, alas, last for ever. What I mean to deprecate is the laying aside any one of these, which is suitable in every other respect, lest it should reveal the secret of your having expended nothing upon dress during this season. Remember how many indulgences to your generous nature would be procured by the price of, a fashionable gown or bonnet, and your feelings will provide a strong support to your duty. Another way in which you may successfully practise economy is by taking care of your clothes, having them repaired in proper time, and neither exposing them to sun or rain unnecessarily. A ten-guinea gown may be sacrificed in half an hour, and the indolence of your disposition would lead you to prefer this sacrifice to the trouble of taking any preservatory precautions, or thinking about the matter at all. Is this right? Even if you can procure money to satisfy the demands of mere carelessness, are you acting as a faithful steward by thus expending it? I willingly grant to you that some women are so wealthy, placed in situations requiring so much representation, that it would be degrading to them to take much thought about any thing but the beauty and fashion of their clothes; and that an anxiety on their part about the preservation of, to them, trifles would indicate meanness and parsimoniousness. Their office is to encourage trade by a lavish expenditure, conformable to the rank in life in which God has placed them. Happy are they if this wealth do not become a temptation too hard to be overcome! Happier those from whom such temptations, denounced in the word of God more strongly than any other, are entirely averted!

This is your position; and as much as it is the duty of the very wealthy to expend proportionally upon their dress, so is it yours to be scrupulously economical, and to bring down your aspiring thoughts from the regions of poetry and romance to the homely duties of mending and caretaking. There will be poetry and romance too in the generous and useful employment you may make of the money thus economised. Besides, if you do not yet see that they exist in the smallest and homeliest of every-day cares, it is only because your mind has not been sufficiently developed by experience to find poetry and romance in every act of self-control and self-denial.

There is, I believe, a general idea that genius and intellectual pursuits are inconsistent with the minute observations and cares that I have been recommending; and by nature perhaps they are so. The memoirs of great men are filled with anecdotes of their incompetency for commonplace duties, their want of observation, their indifference to details: you may observe, however, that such men were great in learning alone; they never exhibited that union of action and thought which is essential to constitute a heroic character.

We read that a Charlemagne and a Wallenstein could stoop, in the midst of their vast designs and splendid successes, to the cares of selling the eggs of their poultry-yard,[68] and of writing minute directions for its more skilful management.[69] A proper attention to the repair of the strings of your gowns or the ribbons of your shoes could scarcely be farther, in comparison, beneath your notice.

The story of Sir Isaac Newton's cat and kitten has often made you smile; but it is no smile of admiration: such absence of mind is simply ridiculous. If, indeed, you should refer to its cause you may by reflection ascertain that the concentration of thought secured by such abstraction, in his particular case, may have been of use to mankind in general; but you must at the same time feel that he, even a Sir Isaac Newton, would have been a greater man had his genius been more universal, had it extended from the realms of thought into those of action.

With women the same case is much stronger; their minds are seldom, if ever, employed on subjects the importance and difficulty of which might make amends for such concentration of thought as would necessarily, except in first-rate minds, produce abstraction and inattention to homely every-day duties.

Even in the case of a genius, one of most rare occurrence, an attention to details, and thoughtfulness respecting them, though certainly more difficult, is proportionally more admirable than in ordinary women.